Independent Review of Paxful.com

Many people are looking for electronic money options today, especially in the Sound Money community.

We reviewed Paxful.com for the Sound Money community, to identify whether this is a good option for people looking to experiment with electronic currencies.

Unfortunately, the experience that we found is that it is mostly a den of scammers.

Since Bitcoin is still relatively new, many people will try out these niche sites, just to see how it works. But then they lose money, and they walk away thinking Bitcoin is ALL just a scam.

So just from those "testers", a site like Paxful can quickly scam people out of millions of dollars.

How it works

Here's how it works.

You buy a gift card from a store. All sellers require that you buy in cash.

A little observation shows that many of the "sellers" are actually the same individual, posing as different individuals.

You must scan your card, AND the full receipt.

Then the seller will take your scans.

Then, the seller comes back & says that the transaction looks fraudulent, and refuse to pay you any Bitcoins because, you know, "security reasons".

Then they will cut off any communication & demand that you cancel the transaction.

If you ask for more information, they say to go to another seller.

But of course, the next seller is a much worse price for you. The top seller might give you 80% of your gift card value, but the next seller is only 60% for you.

And by this time, you want to use the funds on the card quickly, before the previous "seller" can scam you, because you know that they have the card information, and can easily steal the money.

The review system is ineffective

The "review" system does not work, because you can't review the seller unless you complete the transaction. The review scores they have might be artificially generated.

You can get SOME idea of bad experiences from the "number of blockers". You have to go to the user's page and find the number of blockers. For the big sellers this is very high. And I wouldn't even trust that number going forward, because it could be subject to manipulation.

"Dispute system" is clearly an insider game

When you have sent the "seller" your card information, your only comeback is the supposed "escrow" system, where Paxful holds the BitCoin.

However, the escrow system is also a sham.

Here's how that works. The seller starts a "dispute", and you don't get any reasonable time to respond to the dispute. Paxful awards the dispute to the seller within a few minutes. This is another indication that these big sellers with $MMs in trades are really part of Paxful.

It's also just a bad deal!

In addition to the problems above, the deal on coins is very bad. You end up with about 50% or less on most trades, if any trades really do work, which is not clear at this point.

Overall: bad experience, lose money

As an analogy, Paxful is like buying from a store, having the clerk swipe your card, and then walking away and refusing to speak with you, and demanding that you leave the store and go to another store.

It is a very bad experience. Paxful.com does not work. It is a bad, scammy, insecure way to buy Bitcoins.

Paxful is painful.

More Information?

This is an independent, unaffiliated, honest review. For more information on electronic currencies, consider Bitcoin Talk or Coin Telegraph.

Do you need an honest review? Our contact address is honestreview at GMX, dotcom.